Kevin Costner, Kelly Preston and the film ‘For Love of the Game’

First there was Bull Durham (1988). Second there was Field of Dreams (1989). Third there was For Love of the Game (1999). At the time of this review, Kevin Costner has since narrated a baseball piece and played a former baseball player in another film. The movies Bull Durham, Field of Dreams and For Love of the Game reflect the stellar stable of baseball movies starring Kevin Costner.

(John C. Reilly as Gus Sinski, left, and Kevin Costner as Billy Chapel in For Love of the Game).

Michael Shaara wrote the book For Love of the Game, which became the 1999 film of the same name. In the film, we are introduced to battery mates Gus Sinski and Billy Chapel of the Detroit Tigers heading to New York City to play the New York Yankees. John C. Reilly and Kevin Costner play Sinski and Chapel, respectively. The audience learns early that the Tigers have had a losing season, are getting sold, and Chapel as the star of the Tigers is likely to be traded following the season. Add to this that the Yankees need a win to make the playoffs.

 

(J.K. Simmons as Detroit Tigers manager Frank Perry in For Love of the Game).

Chapel is called onto pitch. Being loyal to his friend, Chapel makes the demand to Tigers manager Frank Perry that Gus Sinski, who hasn’t hit well all season, will continue to catch him that day if Perry wants Chapel to start. As an ending to the season and possibly a career, Perry was not going to deny the demand. J.K. Simmons portrayed manager Frank Perry.

(Kevin Costner as Billy Chapel, left, and Kelly Preston as Jane Aubrey in For Love of the Game).

It is among all this that Billy Chapel’s love interest, Jane Aubrey, has declared to the veteran pitcher that she, Jane, has accepted a job in London and would be leaving the same day Chapel is due to pitch. Being poised in the face of the adversity of losing a loyal owner, his team, his career, and his love interest, we see this story roll out into the telling of a pitcher putting everything on the line in pitching the game of a career as he, Billy Chapel, copes with his feelings of loss through the recollections of a relationship with Jane Aubrey, and as we learn her daughter Heather, between innings and batters. Kelly Preston plays Jane Aubrey as Jena Malone plays Heather Aubrey.

(Kevin Costner as Billy Chapel, left, and Jena Malone as Heather Aubrey in For Love of the Game).

In being a game about baseball and an ethos portrayed in a single game, the central question of the movie really centers on something different. The question becomes what love can Billy Chapel and Jane Aubrey believe in and make after Chapel’s career. The movie spent effort to show the romance and passion between the two as well as that between Chapel and the game of baseball. The mystery of this, combined with the hook of a baseball story, gives the viewer a sports romance film. The movie works at that level, and makes for decent date movie material. I grade the experience at 3.75-stars on a scale of one-to-five.

Matt – Saturday, March 28, 2020